by David Mack
“We’re all well aware what happens then, Lieutenant.” Vale hunched over Rager’s shoulder at ops. “Damage report.”
It was clear that Rager was straining to preserve a façade of calm. “Multiple EPS conduit overloads throughout the ship. Primary and secondary sensors are scrambled, but I’m trying to reboot them.” She patched in a new feed of data. “Updates from Wasp and Canterbury. The Breen are disengaging, and the Husnock ship is coming about to match their course.”
“Find out where they’re—”
She was cut off by Thot Tren’s voice from the overhead speakers. “I warned you not to interfere with our mission, Captain. Now I regret to be the bearer of further ill tidings. My team on the Husnock ship has been unable to override that vessel’s automated defenses, and its main computer seems to have interpreted your escort ships’ behavior as a hostile act. Even now it—”
His message was interrupted by a blue streak of light emanating from the Husnock vessel. Tuvok declared, “They’ve fired a missile!” Everyone froze, snared by dread. Then the Titan’s second officer added, “It’s not heading for us. Tracking its current vector.” His eyes widened—not by much, but enough to tell Vale she was not going to like what he said next. “It’s accelerating at high warp toward the red giant.”
Oh, no. Vale jarred herself into action. “Tuvok, analyze that missile, now!”
“The missile’s configuration is not one we’ve seen before, but its warhead contains a significant amount of trilithium. Such a munition could annihilate the star and unleash a hyperwarp shock wave. We must leave immediately!”
That was all Vale needed to hear. “Helm, set course away from the star and—”
“Captain,” Lavena said, “we don’t have warp speed.”
Her mind raced. “How long do we have until the missile makes impact?”
“Fifteen seconds,” Tuvok said. “Then thirty seconds before the shock wave hits us.”
Vale all but threw herself into her command chair. “Bridge to engineering! We need warp speed in thirty seconds or we’re all dead!” A sharp glance at Tuvok. “Tell the Wasp and the Canterbury to warp out of here, now!”
Before she could give more orders, Tren’s voice returned. “My comrades and I are departing, Captain. And to protect innocent lives from the Husnock vessel, we are taking it with us. For your own safety, I strongly suggest you not follow us. Tren out.”
As the channel closed, Vale wished she could strangle Tren for what he’d done.
“Captain,” Tuvok said, “our escorts refuse to leave without us. Captain Scarfield wants to tow us to warp with a tractor beam.”
“No,” Vale said, “if we lose containment, the blast would vaporize them both. Tell them to go, that’s an order!”
As Tuvok transmitted her reply, a sapphire flash on the viewscreen announced the fiery demise of the red giant, whose outer layers vanished like fog in a gale. Then the core of the star shrank into itself, collapsed to a pinpoint—then erupted in a blinding explosion that turned the viewscreen white. “Fifteen seconds to hyperwarp shock wave impact,” Rager said.
Streaks of light on the screen announced the departures of the Wasp and the Canterbury. Vale was thankful she at least had been able to save—
“Containment restored,” Ra-Havreii said over the intraship comm, “warp drive online!”
“Helm—!” That was all Vale had time to say before Lavena jumped the Titan to warp speed, mere seconds ahead of a shock front that portended instant destruction. As the hum of the warp drive resonated through the ship’s spaceframe, Vale said to Rager, “Viewer aft.”
Rager shifted the viewscreen to an aft view just in time to catch the shock front striking the system’s lone rocky planet, which shattered into dust and debris that were scattered and hurled away on the blast wave’s ever-expanding faster-than-light outer curve.
Sarai was back at Vale’s side. “That was close.”
“Understatement of the year, Number One.”
The first officer picked bits of debris from her dark hair. “Now what?”
“We have to adjust our strategy and our tactics, and we need to do it fast. We’ve already lost control of a Husnock ship. Now we need to focus on recovering it, and avoid getting our clocks cleaned in another toe-to-toe fight. But first things first—we have to keep the Breen in our sights, because if we lose them, we’re officially done.”
“Well,” Sarai said, “we have one thing in our favor now. Even if the Breen ships cloak, the Husnock vessel can’t. And tracking something that big at long range shouldn’t pose too much difficulty now that it’s emitting an energy signature.”
“Good, start with that.” An overhead light erupted into a shower of sparks that rained down on Vale, and then the lights went out. She breathed in another lungful of bitter smoke, and its acrid sting sharpened her focus. “Helm, set course to pursue the Breen. Tactical, instruct the Wasp and the Canterbury to do the same, and to keep feeding us any intel they can scare up. Rager, Torvig, let me know when Doctor Ra-Havreii finishes putting out the fires belowdecks. Because as soon as this ship’s combat ready, we’re going to have a rematch with Thot Tren.”
Everything on Titan’s main engineering deck was coming down in pieces or going up in flames. Engulfed in chaos, Ra-Havreii had spent the last few minutes darting from one crisis to the next and hoping he could stay one step ahead of calamity. As he reached through an open bulkhead to pluck out a fried board of isolinear chips, tongues of fire snapped at his arms and shriveled the fine hairs on the backs of his hands. When he finally pulled the blackened circuit board free, it was so hot he had to fling it away without concern for where it went. “Damn it!”
Ensign Meldok rushed to Ra-Havreii’s side. “Sir! Are you all right?”
Ra-Havreii shook his stinging hands and blistering fingertips. “I’m fine.” He pointed past the Benzite engineer. “Bring me that dynoscanner, would you?”
“Aye, sir!” Meldok sprang away, fetched the tool, and returned.
“Thanks,” Ra-Havreii said as he took the ultrasensitive molecular sensor. “Get to the master panel and shut down the starboard EPS taps until we can stabilize the—”
A deep boom and a flash of light cut him off and knocked everyone in main engineering flat on the deck. Blinking away the shock and pain inflicted by the blast, Ra-Havreii realized a key component in the warp core’s matter-antimatter mix assembly had just overloaded and turned itself into smoke, slag, and shrapnel. That’s not good. Not good at all.
“Meldok, shut down the EPS taps!” Ra-Havreii looked for the next closest member of his department and found Ensign Tasanee Panyarachun. He seized the young human woman’s arm to get her attention. “Put a new control board in the coil regulator, on the double!” He pressed the dynoscanner into her hands. “And find the plasma leak in the starboard EPS manifold before it kills us all. Go!” He released her, and she took off like a streak of lightning.
A cry of wrenching metal—an overhead panel broke free high above his head and fell in a mesmerizing tumble-spin. He gauged its trajectory and knew he was clear—and then he saw it arc toward Lieutenant Indra Mondal, one of the ship’s recently assigned new officers. It took him only the merest fraction of a second to realize shouting a warning would not save her; in the time it would take him to get her attention and for her to react to the danger, she would be dead.
He sprang forward and tackled her out of the panel’s path. Its jagged edge tore through his left calf as it struck the deck beside them. He caged his shout of agony behind gritted teeth.
Lying on the deck in his embrace, Mondal belatedly processed what had happened. “My God,” she said as he let go of her and stood. “That would have—”
“Cut off the antimatter to the mix assembly,” Ra-Havreii said as he rushed away, too frantic to waste time on a pointless show of gratitude. “And make it fast, the mix chamber’s overheating!” He clambered up an emergency access ladder to the ruptured component.
No! He keyed in the command code for the door, and its magnetic bolts retracted with a muffled thunk. In a blur he pulled open the heavy portal and slipped inside the radiation-shielded compartment, which was oppressively hot. He ran to Crandall and kneeled beside him. A finger to the man’s carotid confirmed he still had a pulse, but it was weak. Another minute in the smoke and elevated radiation, and the ever-meticulous young human would be dead.
Ra-Havreii leaned his back against Crandall, pulled the man’s body around his shoulders, then he fought his way to his feet. Sweating through his uniform, he staggered on trembling legs as he carried Crandall away from the premix node. One kick opened the unlocked portal, and Ra-Havreii stumbled out onto the catwalk, upon which he set his wounded engineer.
In between gasps of cooler air, Ra-Havreii shouted down to a cluster of blue-uniformed personnel carrying medkit satchels, “Hey! I need a medic up here! It’s an emergency!”
One of them looked up and answered, “On my way!”
Meldok returned and looked up at Ra-Havreii. “EPS taps are off! Is Crandall hurt?”
“He’ll live,” Ra-Havreii said, hoping he wasn’t giving his people false hope. Picturing the damage he had glimpsed inside the premix chamber, he added, “I need a plasma fuser!” The Benzite looked around, found an open tool box, and dug a plasma fuser from it. He lobbed the device up to Ra-Havreii, who caught it and nodded back at Meldok. “Thanks. Go help Tasanee.”
“On my way.” Meldok took off running to his next task.
Equipped and all too aware of the crisis still unfolding around him, Ra-Havreii went back inside the premix chamber—and this time he sealed the bulkhead door behind him.
No reason to expose anyone else to this toxic soup.
The scorching air stung his sinuses and throat as he inhaled. Each shallow breath he drew hurt worse than the one before, and as he worked repairing the cracks in the premix node, sweat drenched his long white hair and deepened the droop of his snowy mustache.
His vision blurred. Blinking, he fought to regain his acuity, but focus proved elusive. Then his guts churned with nausea, and vertigo made him feel as if the room were spinning. The elevated radiation level in the compartment was taking him down with a vengeance.
He was disappointed in himself. Thought I could hold out longer than this. He gulped a deep breath, and it was like swallowing fire. Two hard shakes of his head gave him back a small measure of his stability, and he kneeled to finish the last repairs on the premix node. The frantic pounding of fists against the locked bulkhead door, and the cries of his subordinates to come out and let them eject the entire warp core, only served to distract him and slow his progress.
There hadn’t been enough time to suit up in radiation-resistant gear—of that Ra-Havreii had been certain the moment he saw the damage. Even as he patched and stabilized the mix assembly, he knew he had cheated disaster by less than a minute. In the time it would have taken him to don a radiation suit, the ship would either have been lost in a flash of free radicals and waste heat, or been forced to eject its warp core—a choice that would have left the Titan a crippled husk without warp speed or main power.
Limping away from the repaired node, Ra-Havreii felt confident he had made the best choice available to him. He unlocked the door, which was pulled open by Meldok and Mondal. Without the portal to hang on to, Ra-Havreii collapsed.
The two engineers caught him. As he lay cradled in their arms, Meldok gushed, “You did it, sir! You saved the ship!”
“I know,” Ra-Havreii said in a bone-dry scratch of a whisper.
“Just hang on, sir,” Mondal said. “The medics are having you beamed to sickbay.”
Meldok smiled at Ra-Havreii with what seemed like a manic quality. “It was most brave of you to make that repair without a radiation suit. You’re a true hero, Commander.”
Ra-Havreii let go of consciousness before he could tell Meldok the truth.
I’m no hero, he realized. I just don’t care anymore whether I live or die.
Eighteen
* * *
Even on his best day Gaila would never have been accused of being dignified. All the same, he knew it was unseemly how long and hard he had been laughing. He didn’t care. He was watching his most brightly gilt dreams of avarice come true on the Husnock factory’s long-range sensors.
It was utter mayhem. Starfleet ships and Breen vessels exchanging fire in a star system a few light-years away. A crippling blast fired by the Husnock derelict, which the Breen appeared to have returned to full operational status. An antistellar munition deployed to staggering effect. Each escalation of the conflict had made Gaila whoop and guffaw louder than he had before, and now he was red in the lobes, barely able to breathe, and doubled over with mirth in his chair.
A few more seconds of this and I’ll pass out.
Zinos stood in the office’s open doorway, his face glum as he watched Gaila contort himself with hysterics. “Good news, I presume.”
Gaila decided trying to bottle up his joy would be futile, so he released it all in a victorious whoop. Then a deep breath, and he was able to answer his long-suffering right-hand man. “Magnificent news! The Breen have captured the Husnock derelict we found, and they’ve used it to bloody Starfleet’s nose. We’re off and running!”
The reed-thin Argelian widened his eyes in alarm. “Are you mad? You want to negotiate an arms deal with the Breen? A culture whose idea of haggling is arguing over how many times they’ll shoot you before and after they take whatever they want?”
“That won’t happen this time.” Gaila pointed at Zinos. “That’s why I have you.” A broader gesture, at the factory around them. “And it’s why I had Vatzis beef up our defenses. If the Breen come looking for trouble, we’ll give them more than they can handle.”
“So you say. What if they find the ‘sample’ you left for them?”
“What? You mean the star-fragger?”
“That’s the one,” Zinos said. “What if they point that thing at us?”
The cynical Ferengi sneered at the notion. “Ridiculous. First, it would be overkill. Second, when they come here, it’ll be to acquire more munitions for their new armada. Blow us up, and they’ll doom themselves to either a finite supply of ordnance or a costly reverse-engineering program to figure out how to make more. Third, and this is the best one of all, they can’t—because they’ve already used it!” Gaila guffawed, unable to stop himself.
Zinos waited until Gaila had exhausted himself. “Have you considered that when the Breen arrive on our doorstep, those Starfleet vessels will be right behind them?”
Another stupid question for Gaila to dismiss. “Pfft. So what if they are?”
“If they find out what this facility is, they’ll have every reason to destroy it.”
“Every reason, yes, but nowhere near enough firepower. This is no rinky-dink Federation outpost, or some slapdash Orion tin can. This is a Husnock munitions plant! I used to think the latinum vaults of Ferenginar were the most impregnable places in the galaxy. Compared to this place, the latinum vaults might as well be made of Kaferian rice paper.”
Unconvinced, the Argelian shook his head and paced. “I still don’t like it. How can we conduct business with the Breen when we have Starfleet breathing down our necks?”
The lad had so much to learn about business. “There’s no better time to extract profit from a customer than when he has a gun to his head.”
“Which Rule of Acquisition is that?”
“It’s not one of the Rules, it’s just basic business sense. If you’re selling flotation devi
ces, you add a markup when the customer’s drowning. Any Ferengi child knows that.” He let out a snort of disgust. “At least they used to, before Nagus Rom and all his fairness and equality claptrap. I hear he won’t even let schools bankrupt students anymore. If they can’t see their classmates fail, how in the name of the Blessed Exchequer will they ever learn?”
A frown deepened the lines on Zinos’s forehead. “I think we’re off topic, sir.”
“Hm? Oh. What were we—?” Gaila rewound the conversation thirty seconds in his memory. “Starfleet, right. Listen to me, Zinos. They’re nothing to worry about. Having them as an added pressure will speed our talks with the Breen. They’ll want to re-arm their new toy in time to turn it against the Starfleeters, which means they’ll have to pay whatever price we ask.”
Zinos crossed his arms, a subtle signal that he wasn’t buying Gaila’s reasoning. “And what if the Breen decide to hold a grudge over being extorted?”
“What if they do? We’ll still hold the key to their success. They can hate us all they want, but they won’t be able to change the fact that they need us. As soon as they realize that, I guarantee you, the Breen will find themselves highly invested in our survival.” He checked the sensor readouts, noted the speed of the incoming Breen ships and their Husnock spoil of war, and made some calculations in his head. “They’ll be here and ready to talk business in about eight hours. Go downstairs and start prepping the showroom for our new number-one customers.”
Nineteen
* * *
It had always bothered Sarai to be the last person to arrive for a meeting; it made her feel as if she were walking into an ambush. As irrational as that was, the feeling struck her again as she entered the Titan’s conference room, where Captain Vale and Admiral Riker faced a bulkhead companel that had been repurposed as a viewscreen. The image on the screen was divided; on the left was Captain Scarfield of the Wasp, and on the right was Captain Mareet of the Canterbury. Riker nodded at Sarai as she entered, then said to the others, “Let’s get started.”
